The Palm of Life - a poem about our Changemakers Conference

Meet Wieke Vink, Make Birth Better Champion & Head of Programmes at Routes, an organisation that supports refugees and asylum seekers through mentorship and creative programmes.

Wieke incorporates poetry into her work, crafting original pieces to celebrate the journeys of each cohort of mentors and mentees in the programme.

Wieke’s poems often explore themes of connection, resilience and the shared experiences of participants.

We were over the moon to have Wieke join us at our Changemakers Conference in Birmingham in November where she created a poem all about our day together.

It’s called ‘Palm of Life’ and we are super excited to share it with you here.

The poem encompasses just how we feel about our work and our plans for the future.

Thank you Wieke!

The Palm of Life

No wonder that

The water of labour

Needs protection

When we in our society

Have a hard time

To hold in mind

How reproductive rights

Are linked to all life

When skin and family origin

Keeps determining health outcomes

When we let children die on our shores

It seems to me that we have a problem

With holding life at its core

And so we gather here today

To demand better

In this city in the Midlands

In autumnal weather

Draped in Christmas lights

and flags of solidarity

The youngest city in Europe

With high rates of infant mortality

And stark health inequalities

Yet this city’s perinatal system

Are better, stronger, richer,

Because of the city’s diversity

And we are learners

So we listen to local speakers

And collaborators

Dressed in denim,

rainbow boots and

mushroom dress

Writing notes in a language

that may be understood

Asking us

To centre decolonisation

To be building for women, building for all

To ground in hopeful roots

With a little bundle of compassion

Sleeping calmly in a corner

As we hear about

People doing what they can, where they are

People who didn’t wait, didn’t stop

Who got into action

To make new connections

With doula connectors

Peer support workers

Sling librarians

And

Chats about periods, and prolapse, and pelvic floors

Menstrual health

and more and more

A birthworkers forum

And life health hacks

For communities to flourish

For the good of everyone

Despite setbacks

In a traumatised system,

where folks are fire fighting

To address gaps and shortages and shortcuts

Often overstretched

That don’t rhyme

With the thresholds of life

And we know

We know

We are not supposed to be birthing too much

We are not supposed to be aging too much

And pain might be the done thing

But people are birthing

And we might be told to not tap into to this

But obviously

We can trust our bodies

And so we need respect, consent, communication and kindness

With an invitation into collaboration

Into building relationships of trust

Bringing the balance between light and shade

In contexts where the environment might not yet be inclusive

Yet the evidence and research

Keeps moving forward

From that time when people said

There could be no such thing as birth trauma

To a launch day today

Of the Think Trauma Now

Parent survey

To us knowing and evidencing

That birth trauma is

Preventable

Diagnosable

Treatable

To the rolling out of new services

People-centred

Context-dependent

Developments in how we screen for mental and physical health

In how we start these conversations

So that we can get the right diagnoses

Where therapy and advocacy goes hand in hand

For people to be able to take a stand

For folks to be able to be the parents they want to be

For us to be together in humanity

And for envisioning the childhoods of our youngest

For as changemakers today

Our task is in the safeguarding life’s brilliance

The exquisite power of child birth

When we become womb witnesses

Womb workers

As we navigate the waters

Of contemporary science and policy reports

With age old, ancestral wisdom

At times

Pushed aside

But with no expiry date

Ready to ripen

As we are standing in old traditions

And renewed commitments

To nurturing birth

In ways

That are caring and calm

To bring patience to places

That cannot be predicted

By staff-ratio matrixes

And lunchtime schedules

As time surges on

And all of the world is turning endlessly

Is being brought to a standstill

To a single moment

To a single room

That holds all of life’s worries and wonders

Hormones holding focus

At the edges of the whirlwind of what is and what could be

And so with a little help of Ms Motivation

We are holding conversations on

Communities of care

On Elayos

In each hospital

Each borough

For each family

For each midwife, health visitor and GP

Where professionals can gift their attention

With superb skill sets and specialities

Foregrounding people’s expertise

And the experience of living with resilience

Of tuning towards the Tree of Life

Of walking 26.2 miles to Make Birth Better

Of baking and dancing

As we demand more time

More care

More resources

Sending post packages to practice managers

As we insist on safety

And softness

On knowledge

So that when people ask for our help

Or are finding the words, the movement, or the ‘I need help’ document

We can support them with all that we got

Because we are powerful women

We are powerful people in the room today

Plugging away

All making incremental changes

Making contractions

Through systems

That can break open

And build better worlds

For children to come into

For parents to celebrate, and grieve

For professionals to share their skill, and breathe

For all to be together

In moments that matter

In this world that is messy

And sometimes,

When life throws us curve-balls

All we want to do

Might be to curl up

As if we place

Our little fists

Next to our face

Ready for freedom

Ready for adventures

Ready for a nap

Rest is radical

And it’s time to change

And history has its very own ways

Of telling stories, turned and twisted

But perhaps once upon a time

One day

People may say

‘Remember, remember,

The 15th of November’

The very first Make Birth Better Changemakers Day

And that will be a good thing to be remembered for

To remember

Knowing that we did justice

That we worked love

Here in the building today

As you were strategising

In the cold Birmingham skyline

For life at its core

Existence at its cusp

And the stories of generations

Standing watch

Bearing witness

Sharing support

For the space of birth

To be the place of work

Where parents

And professionals

And babies can be held

In the palm of life

Wieke R. Vink